Best of 2024: All Our Number One Story Picks

The writer Tom Scocca began to experience mysterious swelling in his joints, then low blood-oxygen levels, then an alarming muscle weakness. It coincided with job loss and financial stress. Was it all related?

What happened to the Bailey family in the Detroit suburb of Warren became a flashpoint in the national battle over integration.

She was pressured into convicting a man she believed was innocent—and was haunted by remorse. Three decades later, she did something about it.

Organized crime is mining sand from rivers and coasts to feed demand worldwide, ruining ecosystems and communities. Can it be stopped?

In a Cosmopolitan exclusive, two women reveal their gripping story of survival and sisterhood—and their strategy behind a bombshell Texas lawsuit that could take down a vast syndicate of power brokers.

After Zac Brettler mysteriously fell to his death in the Thames, his parents, Matthew and Rachelle, discovered that he’d been posing as an oligarch’s son, including in dealings with Akbar Shamji and Verinder (Dave )Sharma. Patrick Radden Keefe reports on the case’s many complexities, including an oddly curtailed police investigation.

How the decisions that led to the founding of Israel left the region in a state of eternal conflict.

Desperate migrants. Cartel violence. It’s all happening in the Chiltons’ backyard.

In the two years since Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine's beauty industry has turned basements into hair salons and painted nails under only the glow of headlamps. Its resilience is a form of resistance and a testament to the powerful role beauty services can play in a time of war.

If you wanted to turn someone into a socialist you could do it in about an hour by taking them for a spin around the paddock of a Formula 1 race. The kind of money I saw will haunt me forever.

After a fugitive doctor abandoned his mansion, an enterprising group of party throwers slid in the door, upending the lives of their wealthy neighbors, including LeBron James, Jennifer Lopez, and Ben Affleck.

How girls around the world were coerced into decades of gruelling service to the secretive Catholic group

What are the chances of real romance via a ‘missed connection’? And has the internet turned these interactions from the stuff of romcoms to just a bit creepy?

The biggest news out of Gaza this week was the deaths of seven aid workers affiliated with the non-profit organization World Central Kitchen. The incident was nothing short of perverse: Israel targeted and killed people trying to make a dent in the imminent famine that Israel itself has engineered as part of its strategy to demoralize and destroy, in whole or in part*, the Palestinian population. (*Yes, this is a reference to the international community’s codified definition of genocide .) Perverse was the word that again came to mind when, shortly after the attack on WCK, +972 and Lo…

How Gulf princes, the safari industry, and conservation groups are displacing the Maasai from the last of their Serengeti homeland

The global internet relies on 800,000 miles of undersea cables that are constantly breaking — this is the story of the 22 aging ships that fix them.

These wildlife rehabbers see New York City’s pests as a part of a thriving urban ecosystem.

Law students at Columbia, CUNY, NYU, and Yale explain the demands behind the ongoing anti-war protests and offer their reflections from the encampments.

Former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher is big on Instagram. He’s not the only right-wing figure harnessing backlash to build a brand.

A bathroom renovation in Roland Park opened a window to a long-forgotten world. The dusty, tin box held 100-year-old love letters. Who hid them in the wall? And why? That’s where the mystery begins.